Nintendo’s E3, the NX, and Iwata

Monday, 17 August 2015 02:08

David Conway Jr.

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Hello, its JaidynRemain again. Yes, this is long overdue, I haven’t done anything in almost two months and tons of things have been happening lately, so I supposed its about time I get back to discussing the latest Nintendo news. For now I’m just going to discuss Nintendo’s E3 specifically and the death of Satoru Iwata, there’s no avoiding it. Everyone else has largely already discussed this issue so I’ll provide my take on it.

The Death of a Legend

Just like everyone else, the sudden death of Satoru Iwata was a shock, but after the fact it didn’t seem that surprising, since he’d been having a lot of health issues. What makes me even feel worse about this is he died just after receiving huge backlash from Nintendo’s E3 presentation, though it has helped to calm people down over that as well.

I’ve heard so many stories about Satoru Iwata after the fact, such as how he single-handedly reprogrammed an early Pokemon game–I don’t recall which–to be able to hold both the region for that game, and the entirety of Kanto as well. I also did not realize he was responsible for Balloon Fight, though I am well aware, of course, that he’s one of the central people behind Super Smash Bros., along with series creator Masahiro Sakurai, whom naturally probably took his death the worst.

I don’t have any real personal connections to Satoru Iwata, but as a still-active executive who died while still in that position, and no less the President of Nintendo, which has had a major impact on my life, this news has definitely taken its toll on me worse than other celebrity deaths recently. Namely, legends like Leonard Nimoy and Cristopher Lee, who I respected greatly, but I wasn’t surprised too much when they had their time.

Picking up the Pieces

The future of Nintendo is looking really strange at this point. There’s been rumors about the NX ever since E3 2015, most of which I feel are probably fake, other than them showing it off at or around the time of E3. I think they likely did behind closed doors, but I don’t think any of the rumors are real. Then there’s the question of Nintendo’s game announcements at E3. I knew most of them would be spinoffs, as Iwata had stated as much last year. I just figured there’d be at least one new surprise this E3, which didn’t happen.

I never managed to finish my pre-E3 speculation video, but I did post an article up about it on my website and linked to it on twitter, which I will provide a link to in the description below. In my 10 E3 predictions I got about half of them correct. For Metroid and Animal Crossing, I did not expect spinoff games to be announced, but I was very confident we wouldn’t be getting main titles for those franchises. Technically, Paper Jam isn’t a Paper Mario game either. I was also wrong about a Smash newcomer and Diddy Kong Racing getting announced, but I was technically correct on a new Techmo Koei crossover and Tales of Zesteria’s release date announcement, which while not at E3 came shortly later.

Unfortunately I was wrong about any major new title announcements for Nintendo. At the same time, I don’t see how people suddenly think the NX is launching next year because of this, and I’ve commented numerous times why this is a ludicrous idea. The first thing here is that Nintendo has never, to date, showed off a console then released it only months later. They want, and need, to have time to build it up. Nintendo isn’t stupid, and releasing the NX next year would be STUPID.

Nintendo largely focused on 2015 games, and early 2016 games, not so much on games for later in 2016. Nintendo also announces games throughout the year. So this year, they just decided to largely focus on spinoff games, and more games will gradually be announced. There’s also the new unified system they are planning to make games more easily producible between the Wii U, 3DS, and NX, and even Mobile titles. This unified account system will also include a replacement for Club Nintendo.

I think Nintendo will be announcing this account system very soon, later this fall, and release it on Wii U and 3DS. Maybe this will even include the ability to finally play Game Boy VC games on Wii U, and SNES and GBA VC games on 3DS, even if that feature is new 3DS exclusive.

The End of the Wii U

The Wii U has only recently hit 10 million units sold, definitely a paltry number compared to the competition. The Wii U isn’t long for this world for certain, but I think it still has one more year under its belt, 2016. As I stated earlier, I think they’ll gradually announce the final few titles for Wii U throughout this year and early next year. Retro Studios still has a project for Wii U, and apparently Next Level Games might as well. We’re also most likely getting Zelda Wii U next year as well, despite all of the rumors people keep spreading.

Due to Nintendo’s statements about the unified account system as well as easy porting of games between platforms, I do think the NX will fully support all Wii U downloadable titles, and will be backwards compatible with the Wii U as well. Unless it has a huge new gimmick like the Wii had, I don’t think any late Wii U games will be directly ported, they’ll just be playable on the NX inherently… and maybe have additional features or better framerate/resolution if played on the NX.

One possible explanation for the NX’s gimmick is connectivity between different platforms, such as being able to use tablets as a GamePad. This was part of one of the NX leaks, but I had thought of this idea before the leak even came out, due to looking over Nintendo’s past statements on the subject. No, this is not the same thing as porting their old games to tablets; this would simply allow you to use a tablet as a second screen on the console if you wish, or you could also use a GamePad and -maybe- a new 3DS, though that one may be more iffy.

Conclusion

Nintendo’s E3 and the death of Iwata have left questions for the future, but personally I’m looking forward to what’s coming in the future for Nintendo. I feel we’re still going to get a great lineup of games next year for the Wii U, then in 2017 the NX will release with quite a bit more launch titles than the Wii U had.

Stay tuned and next time I’ll discuss the news about King K. Rool. If you liked this discussion and would like to hear more related topics please comment, like, share, and subscribe. This is JaidynReiman, signing out.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2015 at 2:08 am and is filed under Discussions, General.
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